Yard Happenings

Time for another post.  It seems like I always have a choice to make… expansive text or photos.  Yesterday (Sunday) afternoon I had just about committed to a long narrative but I spent about two hours in the yard photographing birds and came away with 238 photos.  After initial processing I am keeping 101… too many, but I have a very difficult time throwing away what I consider good photos of subjects that can be as elusive as birds, especially since the images cost next to nothing to retain.  I had planned to post my images last (Sunday) night but it took all of my free time just to go through and grade my photos, deciding which to discard and which to keep.  I still have to go through the 101 photos and categorize and rename them.  I could use a full-time assistant for that task… and the backlog I seem to accumulate.  

My Sunday afternoon started out by weeding wood violets that have taken over in the front of the house.  Not long after starting I heard what I was fairly certain were Cedar waxwings… the second time this past week I thought I had heard them.  I looked around carefully and true to my ears, there were a pair sitting in the dead pine tree in our front yard!  A confirmed sighting!  I tried to ease myself towards the house and my camera but the waxwings flew.  

A while later I heard the call of Common ravens.  Some years we have a pair nest in the neighborhood, but this year it’s been relatively quiet and the crows’ behavior tells me that there are probably none around.  However in this case the crows were obviously after a raven.  I looked up after a few minutes and saw about half a dozen crows harassing a raven at an unusually high altitude.  After a couple of minutes I could tell the disturbance was coming my way.  I looked up again and was surprised to see four ravens flying from north to south overhead.  Seeing more than a pair of ravens is unusual for this area, so I knew that these were products of this year’s breeding.  

After a long period of weeding I quit for the afternoon and retrieved my camera, setting up in the yard where I have view corridors of some of the main staging areas and water features.  Almost immediately I heard a commotion overhead and looked up to see a young Chestnut-backed chickadee begging for food… one of the parents was on the suet feeder.  I had no hopes of getting a photo… I need almost 15-feet for my lens to focus.  However I saw a small yellow bird which I at first took to be one of the many female American goldfinches in the yard, but upon closer inspection I saw that it was an Orange-crowned warbler attempting to access the suet feeder.  I quietly watched, hoping the warbler would fly to the watercourse where I could photograph it.  But it was not going to happen… after a couple of minutes the warbler flew straight from the yard.  

I obtained some really nice photos of birds over the next couple of hours, but almost all the birds in our yard this spring have been the usual crowd.  I keep hoping for an influx of warblers but they have been in short supply in our yard this year.  I obtained some excellent photos of woodpeckers (Hairy and Downy), Chestnut-backed chickadees, a family of White-breasted nuthatches, a few European starlings, lots of American goldfinches and of course the House sparrows.  

Around 6pm I finally decided to call it quits and went back in the house.  I had no sooner taken my camera off the monopod than I looked out the window and saw the covey of California quail that my wife had spied a couple of days previously.  They were difficult to count, but there were at least 12 young and I think there might have been 13… in addition to the parents.  Since I hadn’t obtained any photos of the family I reassembled my photographic gear and headed back outside.  I took about 50 photos of the family, and I have to tell you that with each release of the shutter I mentally cringed because of the additional work I was causing myself.  I ended up throwing most of the quail photos away, but it was still work to look at each photo, see if I could salvage something by cropping, and then actually delete the photos.  

Unfortunately by the end of the breeding season we will be lucky to have 4-6 left.  That was about our tally the previous year, but unfortunately last year at the end we were down to one covey and out of about five survivors, not including the adult female which didn’t make it all of the way through raising the young, we were left with only a single female and about four males.  And I’m quite sure that it is that female survivor which is raising this family this year.  

I probably shouldn't start with a photo of part of the rogues' gallery who are eating me out of house and home by their appetite for suet. but it's what came up first so you get a European starling.  These birds can be difficult to photograph and show the colors reflected off their feathers, so that's why I included it. 

 A Chestnut-backed chickadee which, at least at this time of year, greatly outnumber the Black-capped chickadees in the yard.

 A White-breasted nuthatch in a nice, natural setting...

 

One of the (very small) California quail that is a member of this year's single covey. 

  

I usually don't like to include photos where the birds don't appear in totally natural environments, but I'm making a couple of  exceptions here due to the quality of the photographs.  A male House finch... 

  

and a photo of a male Spotted towhee that I took a couple of days previously.   Unfortunately I photographed it on one of my 'staging sticks' so it, like the House finch above, does not appear in a totally natural environment.